November 2024

Aux lecteurs francophones : De nombreux lecteurs regrettent que cette newsletter ne soit pas entièrement en français. Je me permets de rappeler ici que Linkedin permet de traduire les articles en différentes langues. Il suffit d'activer cet outil contextuel à partir de vos préférences linguistiques.

Emergency as "an active negation of utopia." [1]

If we want tomorrow not always be too late, anticipation must take precedence over adaptation, ethics of the future must prevail over the tyranny of the present....

Modern societies suffer from a distorted relationship to time. It is as if the short term were the impassable horizon, whether it be the activities of the stock exchange, the date of the next elections, or the influence of the media. (...) From the short term to what is immediate, from a restricted horizon to the absence of any horizon, such is the time scale which has underlain the closing years of the twentieth century. (...) Our relation to time has enormous economic, social, political, and ecological consequences. All over the world, the citizens of today are claiming rights over the citizens of tomorrow, threatening their well-being and at times their lives, and we are beginning to realize that we are jeopardizing the exercise by future generations of their human rights. Without proper attention, future generations are in danger of becoming the prisoners of unmanageable changes such as population growth, degradation of the global environment, growing inequalities between North and South and within societies, rampant social and urban apartheid, threats to democracy, and mafia control.

By giving precedence to the logic of "just in time" at the expense of any forward-looking deliberation, within a context of ever faster technological transformation and exchange, our era is opening the way for the tyranny of emergency. Emergency is a direct means of response which leaves no time for either analysis, forecasting, or prevention. It is an immediate protective reflex rather than a sober quest for long-term solutions. It neglects the fact that situations have to be put in perspective and that future events need to be anticipated. (Source: BINDE, J. (2000). Toward an Ethics of the Future)

These words are not mine, but could have been.

More than 30 years ago, I had passionate discussions with Eleonora BARBIERI MASINI, my doctoral supervisor, on the question of ethics and the future.

At the time, I was working in the field of territorial foresight. And our debate was about whether we should agree to do foresight work for elected extreme political parties' representatives, whether left or right, or whether we should boycott them.

The main arguments for and against were the following.

• "The power of anticipation and operational foresight is such that working for such parties means agreeing to give them the tools to apply their policies effectively" versus "The educational power of foresight is such that working for them is, on the contrary, an opportunity to make them aware of their mistakes and allow collective (multi-party) intelligence to take precedence over the individual political decisions of a single party".
• "Does the futurist have to be absolutely neutral and do his or her job regardless of who the client is?" versus "All futurists are also citizens, and as such they must respect their personal convictions and not serve an ideology of which they disapprove". Of course, in the background to this debate there were hints of the last World War and the way people behaved in the face of fascism, whether in Italy or elsewhere.

Today the debate has shifted somewhat outside the realm of partisan and party politics. For all futurists are now supposed to have as their guiding compass the emergence of a world that is more sustainable (versus the Anthropocene, waste, CO2) and more humane (versus inequality, deprivation of human rights), a better world for future generations.

Une éthique de l’anticipation devrait cultiver la capacité à mettre en lumière les opportunités que les innovations génèrent. Elle doit éviter la focalisation unilatérale sur les risques et la simple précaution, car le raisonnement de précaution peut empêcher l’anticipation de déployer tout son potentiel. Source in French & in English.

If there is still a debate, it would rather be between those who embrace technology without limit, like the transhumanists (but are they futurists?) or Yann Le Cun, and those who warn of the possible excesses (AI, artificial reality, etc. ) and consequences, like Marie Dollé (Le mirage du savoir). Over the last two years we have seen the influence of the emergence of Chat GPT in the spread of these conversations around AI. Which just goes to show how much we're still in the short term that Bindé referred to, some 25 years on.

What influence have futurists had over the last 25 years throughout the world in changing our relationship with time, in moving away from this exclusive preoccupation with the present or the very short term? Even though the problems we are facing are very long-term ones, such as climate change, the degradation of the biosphere, the disruption of the ocean system, etc.

The new generations who are more aware than the others of this lack of action over the long term are suffering from an anxiety that paralyses them (eco-anxiety, refusal to give birth, escape to virtual realities, etc.).

Emergency has therefore become the mode of government for the 21st century. In the absence of a new generation of leaders with a greater aptitude for anticipation, and under the pressure of the looming polycrisis, it is likely to remain so.

Emergency is a direct means of response which leaves no time for either analysis, forecasting, or prevention. It is an immediate protective reflex rather than a sober quest for long-term solutions. It neglects the fact that situations have to be put in perspective and that future events need to be anticipated. (Source: BINDE, J. (2000). Toward an Ethics of the Future)

Another world is possible

Yet another world is possible. And if we pay attention, we can see many traces of it all around us. Over the past two decades, movements like Positive Planet, entrepreneurs like Gunter Pauli (Zero Emissions Research and Initiatives) and intellectuals like Jean-Marc Jancovici ( The Shift Project ) have been working to build a better world in a wide range of areas and countries.

The international resonance of Kim Stanley ROBINSON's brilliant book The Ministry for the Future shows the appetite for a vision of the future that is both more lucid and more constructive, capable of pointing the way to concrete solutions.

Rather than suggesting our doom is destined, ROBINSON shows how we can rise to this extraordinary challenge. A dystopian future is possible if we fail to act. But a utopian future is not out of reach if we succeed in doing so. (The Guardian)

So we need to move away from a culture of emergency, not by denying it but by building on its positive aspects.

A very simple compass, made up of 4 axes, can guide this achievement.

• The first axis is criticality, i.e. the feeling or analysis that leads to the ability to prioritise the most crucial issues we need to tackle (emergency or urgency). A good example is the planetary boundaries: should we first work to restore those that have been exceeded or, on the opposite, prioritise those that are about to be exceeded to prevent them from being exceeded? To assess this level of criticality, it is essential to develop a systemic vision of a problem in order to identify all its direct and indirect impacts.
• The second axis is foresight, i.e. the skills needed to anticipate possible developments and their systemic consequences, and to organise structural change. Territorial foresight, for example, helps an area to identify the problems it will encounter and to shape the future it wants collectively. To extend and develop foresight skills, it is therefore necessary to introduce this discipline at school, in higher education and in vocational training, in the same way as mathematics or writing.
• The third axis is agency (as human agency), i.e. the capacity of individuals to have the power and resources to fulfill their potential (wikipedia). This ability is affected by the personal worldview (how do I see my place in the world and my capacity for action?), the cultural environment (does my culture or social environment allow me to act?) and the means of action (can I access the resources I need to take action?). Policies to encourage innovation or entrepreneurship are good examples of such empowerment.
• The fourth axis is cooperation, i.e. the development of sufficient collective intelligence to ensure that trust and exchange form the basis for coordinated action. Because the scale of the problems to be solved is such today that only the union of multitudes of agents can lead to significant progress. An excellent example is ocean management which requires the involvement of every player, from the smallest to the largest, from one end of the planet to the other, if we are really to stem the current degradation of the global ocean.

We are an intelligent species. We have resources that no other generation has had before us. We have a multi-millennial history of challenges faced and overcome.

All we lack is self-confidence and a certain vital impetus.

There is still time to pull ourselves together to overcome our material and temporal selfishness and forge a new, sustainable, more human future for our species.

F. GOUX-BAUDIMENT

1] LAÏDI, Z. (1994). Un monde privé de sens.